The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories : Form and Meaning in Oral History SUNY Series in Oral and Public History Author : Portelli, Alessandro
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cover next page > title : The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories : Form and Meaning in Oral History SUNY Series in Oral and Public History author : Portelli, Alessandro. publisher : State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin : 0791404307 print isbn13 : 9780791404300 ebook isbn13 : 9780585064536 language : English subject Oral history, Working class--Italy--Terni--History--20th century, Working class--Kentucky--Harlan County--History-- 20th century, Terni (Italy)--Social conditions, Harlan County (Ky.)--Social conditions. publication date : 1990 lcc : D16.14.P67 1990eb ddc : 907 subject : Oral history, Working class--Italy--Terni--History--20th century, Working class--Kentucky--Harlan County--History-- 20th century, Terni (Italy)--Social conditions, Harlan County (Ky.)--Social conditions. cover next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page cover-0 next page > The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories < previous page cover-0 next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page cover-1 next page > SUNY Series in Oral and Public History Michael Frisch, Editor < previous page cover-1 next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page cover-2 next page > The Death Of Luigi Trastulli And Other Stories Form and Meaning in Oral History Alessandro Portelli STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS < previous page cover-2 next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page cover-3 next page > Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1991 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Portelli, Alessandro. The death of Luigi Trastulli, and other stories : form and meaning in oral history / Alessandro Portelli. p. cm.(SUNY series in oral and public history) Includes bibliographical references (p. ISBN 0-7914-0429-3.ISBN 0-7914-0430-7 (pbk.) 1. Oral history. 2. Working classItalyTerniHistory20th century. 3. Working classKentuckyHarlan CountyHistory20th century. 4. Terni (Italy)Social conditions. 5. Harlan County (Ky.)Social conditions. I. Title. II. Series. D16.14.P67 1990 907dc20 89-26260 CIP < previous page cover-3 next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_v next page > Page v CONTENTS Introduction vii 1. The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Memory and the Event 1 I. On Methodology 2. Research as an Experiment in Equality 29 3. What Makes Oral History Different 45 4. "The Time of My Life": Functions of Time in Oral History 59 II. Two Industrial Cultures Section One Terni, Umbria, Italy 5. Dividing the World: Sound and Space in Cultural Transition 81 6. Uchronic Dreams: Working-Class Memory and Possible Worlds 99 7. The Best Garbage Man in Town: Life and Times of Valtàro Peppoloni, Worker 117 8. Sports, Work, and Politics in an Industrial Town 138 9. Typology of Industrial Folk Song 161 < previous page page_v next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_vi next page > Page vi Section Two Harlan, Kentucky, United States 10. Patterns of Paternalism: From Company Town to Union Shop 195 11. No Neutrals There: The Cultural Class Struggle in the Harlan Miners' Strike of 1931-32 216 III. The Interdisciplinary Approach 12. The Oral Shape of the Law: The "April 7 Case" 241 13. Absalom, Absalom!: Oral History and Literature 270 The Narrators 283 Notes 291 Index 319 < previous page page_vi next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii INTRODUCTION In 1849, Herman Melville wrote in a letter, "Would that a man could do something & then sayIt is finished . that he has reached his uttermost & can never exceed it." This book brings together essays written, rewritten, revised, translated and retranslated, at different times from 1979 to 1989; they have gone through so many changes that it is hard to think of this as a definitive version.* On the other hand, in Moby-Dick, Melville also wrote, "God keep me from ever completing anything. This book is but a draughtnay, but the draught of a draught . ." This book, of course, is no Moby-Dick. But it tries to convey the sense of fluidity, of unfinishedness, of an inexhaustible work in progress, which is inherent to the fascination and frustration of oral historyfloating as it does in time between the present and an ever-changing past, oscillating in the dialogue between the narrator and the interviewer, and melting and coalescing in the no-man's-land from orality to writing and back. The process of memory, the form of oral historical narrative, and the experience of the encounter in the field are some of the themes of this book. This approach seems to contradict the initial impulse for much of the most worthwhile work in oral history: the search for "more reality," for direct experience, and for first-person "testimony." I do not wish to belittle this impulse, for it is the source of the political, or at least moral, tension which makes oral history attractive in the first place. In a 1989 article, the historian and activist Sergio Bologna reminded us that '''Oral history' in Italy began between the *Information on publication history is enclosed in the form of footnotes appended to each chapter. It is to be intended that earlier published versions are differentsometimes very differentfrom the ones which appear in this book. < previous page page_vii next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_viii next page > Page viii 1950s and 1960s, as an antagonist with the institutions and methods of historical research." Its theme, Bologna continues, was "the denial of memory"; its practitioners, outsiders who "knew that, because they were uncovering a memory suppressed, they would be denied recognition as regular historians, they would be refused access to the essential tools of their art." I was seeking suppressed memories and forms of expression when, in 1969, I made two decisions which shaped my life: I bought a tape recorder, and I joined a radical group (everything else, from my professional career to meeting my wife, followed). One reason for the title of this book is to repeat once more that the death of an obscure factory worker in an obscure industrial town is a historical fact of great significance and deep implications, and deserves our full attention. Ever since the Federal Writers' Project interviews with former slaves in the 1930s, oral history has been about the fact that there's more to history than presidents and generals, and there's more to culture than the literary canon. Indeed, one of the reasons why oral history has been sometimes less than welcome in some circles is that it has disarranged many accepted truths. The history of slavery had to be rewritten once the ex-slaves' testimony was finally taken seriously; and we can no longer think about Fascism as we did before Luisa Passerini or Ronald Fraser began their work (although, of course, many still doto their own great loss). Sergio Bologna regrets that when, in the 1970s, some scholars introduced in Italy a heightened methodological awareness derived from British, American, and French experiences, the political climate did not encourage a dialogue between the new approaches and the political tension of the founders of Italian oral history. Although this is true in general, there are exceptions, and I like to think of my work as a contribution to this dialogue. Though coming from different directions and along different routes, Luisa Passerini, Cesare Bermani, and several others in Italy (including myself) have all worked with different combinations of methodological awareness and political tension. Internationally, this has been true of many oral historians who brought a sophisticated historical training to the study of oral sources from nonhegemonic social groups and the reconstruction of suppressed memories: Ronald Grele and Michael Frisch in the United States, Raphael Samuel, Anna Devin and Mary Chamberlain in Britain, Mercedes Vilanova and Cristina Borderías in Spain, Eugenia Meyer, Annemarie Troeger, Lutz Niethammer and countless others in many different countries. Rather than replacing previous truths with alternative ones, however, oral history has made us uncomfortably aware of the elu- < previous page page_viii next page > If you like this book, buy it! < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix sive quality of historical truth itself. Yet, an aspiration toward "reality," "fact," and "truth" is essential to our work: though we know that certainty is bound to escape us, the search provides focus, shape, and purpose to everything we do. The question is, then, what kind of truth? If I may be forgiven another literary reference, we may take a hint from Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic distinction between "Novel" and "Romance" in the introduction to The House of the Seven Gables. The Novel, he says, "is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience"; the romance, on the other hand, allows greater freedom to the imagination, but ''it sins unpardonably" whenever it "swerve[s] aside from the truth of the human heart." If we modernize Hawthorne's language and adapt his metaphor, we may imagine a parallel distinction between the "minute fidelity" to fact of positivistic history and social sciences, and the special attention to subjectivity ("the human heart") which oral history requires and permits. "Fidelity" and "subjectivity," however, like Novel and Romance, are neither apart nor antagonistic: each provides the standard against which the other is recognized and defined.